Double Digits

We have finally reached the week of double digits and we are over halfway done with the semester. It was great getting to have a nice fall break and enjoy some much needed rest. Now, it's time to refocus and finish the semester strong.

I had my first official meeting with my CE and supervisor Friday morning. It was great to finally sit down and get the basics down for student teaching. It put into perspective how real this whole thing is and will be next semester. My supervisor informed me of the requirements that I will have to include throughout the ten weeks of me being the teacher. One thing that was brought to my attentions was global awareness. I know this is big during student teaching and I know this is something I need to work on. I found an article, "How are you helping your students become global citizens", that talks about helping students become global citizens in the classroom.

Over the past couple of years I have learned that it is important to include global awareness when teaching. One thing that I found interesting in this article is, "To develop these competencies, students need learning experiences that build over time, developing their academic understanding and empathy along with their confidence to take action. That means teachers in diverse contexts also need to develop their skills as global educators." It is important to include global awareness in the classroom for students to be aware of what goes on around the world. Students should be able to relate to events and other things going on in the world today and from the past.

This relates to the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards, standard 2. Teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students in a way that they include diversity and other cultures into the classroom. Students are aware of what is going on around them by the way they are taught by their teachers.

Week 9

The week is here where we are going to be turning in our first LE for edTPA. It's very scary to think that this is the practice before the real thing. It's so important to do this work with the mindset of, "You get one chance to turn it in next semester... Make it count and get as much information and help as you can this semester." This is something that is completely new to all of us and it doesn't make me feel any better when I hear, "We can only give limited feedback". However, I want to take the feedback that I receive and make the next one, the real one, ten times better. I have also been communicating with my CE about this whole process and she is doing great with helping he best she can to work me into her schedule and the classroom schedule. I am getting some great experience from my CE, the students and from the classroom environment.

So for this week I have been thinking a lot about giving and receiving feedback. I found an article that gives Tips for Grading and Giving Students Feedback. This article includes twelve different tips for this topic. I am only going to include some of the ones that I found interesting and that I will consider to use in the future.

1. Use Rubrics- this allows you to show how the student did and how they can improve. Leave comments that will show students what they need to do.
2. Only focus feedback on one skill- this will allow the student to focus on one thing at a time. Don't try to overwhelm them with so much to fix that they feel defeated.
3. Rotate students to give deeper feedback to- you don't have to focus on every single student for each assignment. As long as you rotate and give each student your attention. 
4. Train students to give feedback to each other- this allows peer communication and each the students to give the first wave of feedback to each other. This saves you from having to repeatedly write the same basic comments that could have been easily caught by a peer.

These are some of the tips that I read and found helpful to me for feedback and grading. I liked how there were several different ways to approach giving feedback. I enjoyed this article and included it in the blog if you would like to look at it yourself.

This aligns with standard two of the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards perfectly. Teachers establish a respectful environment for for a diverse population of students relates to this article because teachers are treating students as individuals and giving them the feedback they need. 

It's a GR8 Week!

I can't believe it's already week eight! Where have all of the weeks gone? It seems like I blink and it's another week and I am writing another blog. This week I am continuing to work with my small group and I can see the progression. Each time I work with my group, they get more and more excited to learn. The students have good days and bad days with wanting to focus and learn. I have noticed that they struggle more on Fridays and do better on Mondays. This Monday was such a GREAT Monday that I had to reward them with skittles because I wanted them to know how proud I was of them and for them to keep up the good work. Unfortunately, not everyday is going to be like that in this profession. Some days the students' are not going to be motivated to do anything except sit in their seats and take up oxygen. I found an article that gives details on "Motivating the Unmotivated". I think this is a great article to refer to when your students are not feeling motivated in the classroom.

This article gives five tips for teachers to help their students become motivated.

1. Focus: Teachers must be ready to focus mainly motivation for students who are not motivated. Students' who are not motivated are more likely to not participate in classroom activities, tutoring, mentoring etc.
2. Time Commitment: Teachers invest at least 15 minutes per week to focus on motivation which will increase teaching time. 
3. Reinforcement Through Repetition: It would help if teachers required repetitive reinforcement. Students would be more motivated if they saw this action don more often in the classroom. 
4. Effective Motivators: This requires this around the students to be positive motivators that will help the situation and to not be a negative impact. Also, this includes the parents or guardians of the students and for the teacher to look at the student as an individual and not at their parents.
5. Fun for the Students: Make it fun for the students so they will want to do what you are wanting them to do. 

Also, this article gives a motivational program to use that's called, "On Giants' Shoulders". It is a program that advocates a strategy for repetitively motivating underperforming elementary and middle school students to respect their teachers, peers, schools, and the learning process using 15-minute, once-per-week online chats with academically accomplished high school students who appreciate the value of education. The students are compared based off of interests. I thought that this was a great way to be motivated as an elementary student. I know when I was in Elementary school I looked up to high schools and couldn't wait to be that old.

There are so many different benefits from this type of program that it relates easily to the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards. Standard 1: Teachers Demonstrate Leadership and lead in their classroom. As a part of being a teacher leader, teachers should take responsibility for all students' learning. Also, standard 2, teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students. teachers create an environment that is encouraging and supportive to students. 

Week Seven

I can't believe we are already in the middle of week seven... Where has the time gone? It amazes me each week how much closer I am to student teaching. It's a scary to think about but such a huge accomplishment all at the same time.

This week during my clinical experience I had my first observation with a small group. I felt like overall the observation went pretty good. I have areas to improve on but the first one is out of the way and I don't have to stress about it anymore. Also, this week I was able to do my first bus duty on my own. The way bus duty works is one first grade teacher will take all bus riders for the first grade(which was me) and will walk them down to the bus area and make sure they get on their bus. Then, each teacher is assigned to a specific bus and will have to help monitor the bus and the students getting on and off until all students are where they need to go. This was a very interesting experience and I'm glad I was able to do it on my own so I will already have an idea of how it works for student teaching.

I have been thinking a lot about my time when I begin student teaching and how I am going to handle communication with parents. My CE has given me tips on how to contact parents and when, but I am nervous about the transition from her to me. So, I have looked up so ways that could help with parent communication when I become the teacher and how I could make it easier. I found a article that gives 3 Tech Tips for Parent Newsletters. These Newsletters are a way to communicate with parents to inform them about upcoming events, what is going on in the classroom and suggestions on how families can support their children's academic growth at home.

1. Choose the right tool!
Make sure that the Technology tool that you are using is friendly for all parents who may or may not use technology. Some of the suggested sites to use are from Monica Burns.

1. Spark Page: This free app for Adobe lets teachers create a webpage on their browser or iPad. It's a beautiful design tool that's also delightfully easy to use. Teachers can add photos from their device, search for stock images to illustrate an idea, and add plenty of text to their page. Spark Page lets you embed YouTube videos and links to other pages so that you can share school stories and online resources with parents. When you finish designing the page, you'll have a link that can be shared with families.
2. Wordpress: As a classroom teacher, I used Wordpress to share updates with families, and it's the tool that I still use for my ClassTechTips blog. Wordpress lets users set up a free website that they can update as frequently as they like. This is a good choice for teachers who are looking to post weekly updates instead of a monthly newsletter. Wordpress is web and mobile friendly, so you can even use your cell phone to post information for families.
3. Pages: Pages is a fantastic document creation tool that's available on Mac and iOS devices. It includes newsletter templates so that teachers can design their newsletters simply by dragging and dropping images and adding information. Pages is a great tool if you want your newsletter to reach a diverse set of families. You can save your final creation as a PDF file and share it as an email, or you can print it out to send home on paper.

2. Continuously Capture Media

Capture moments in and out of the classroom from student success by pictures. It can be on field trips, extra curricular activities, academic success, a normal day in the classroom, visitors etc. Allow students to participate in the newsletter by writing their own stories and bringing in their own pictures they want to include.

3. Make a Plan to Share

You want to make sure the Newsletter gets to the Parents so they are able to access it. Remind allows you to send the links to the newsletters or attach them as documents for parents to access. Also, Remind is a great way to communicate with the parents. You are able to send messages back and forth about any questions or concerns. You can also use a QR code for parents to san to access the Newsletter. All of these would work.

I would relate this to standard two, Teachers Establish a Respectful Environment for a Diverse Population of Students. It is 2E, teachers work collaboratively with the families and significant adults in their lives of their students. This standard insures that teachers improve communication between the school and home communities.